I, along with many forumers have been saddened that Fox, Jeeps, Top Fighter, and Black Ice are no longer our moderators. Reason being is that they did a fantastic job, and made the forum feel like a family for all the vets.

Times change - and I accept that. Let me say that the new moderators have big shoes to fill. This will not be an easy job for the new team. However, I genuinely wish them well, and as such the forum vets should be here to welcome and help.

I understand that the present time is a changeover period; inherent in that is unavoidable confusion.

My questions: can we please have confirmation on the forum team set up. Who are our new moderators? Who do we message if needs be?

At present, if us forumers see a message along the lines of "contact moderator" - we are clueless.

Going to do the unmentionable and BUMP this thread. Would it be at all possible for someone-anyone from CS to give us an idea as to who will be taking over being moderators. Just a few names so we know who to mention in threads that we feel need your attention.

A little insight on this topic, as I know there has been some confusion. The former moderator team was fantastic at their job. A little too fantastic. Because of this, they've moved on to bigger and better things with Activision and Call of Duty, focusing more on community game nights and other projects like that.

Because of this, a void was created in the forums, and my team has been asked to fill it. My agents (not of Hydra, contrary to popular belief, lol) have been performing moderator actions since before Ghosts launch, but have stepped it up since the change over. We originally started with 5 moderators during our peak months, but have dropped down to three over the last couple of weeks. I'm sure you have seen their names around by now, they are:

While these handles have belonged to the same agents for some time now, we do have the ability to move different agents in and out of them, so we don't have to create a new Mod account every time we change someones role with the team. This is why you will see a sign off at the end of each post (^MV), so you can identify who they are. We also have a number of other moderator handles we are not currently using.

All 3 of these agents have been around the industry for a few years now, they started with the company moderating ELITE competitions and boards during MW3, moved into QA here at Activision for BO2, and then were recruited by me to be our forums support/moderators. They are all avid gamers, and have been a part of the COD family in one way or another for years.

It's been difficult for us to come into these forums and keep from getting conversational with all of you, which would help you get a better feel for who we are, but we also want to make sure we are not confusing anyone about what our role is here. We are not community managers, or advocates. We are simply here to help respond to support related questions, maintain the spirit of the Activision Rewards program and keep the conversations civil. We want to make sure that everyone is able to get help and have a good time while in these forums.

With the Rewards program we also hoped that we would be able to identify helpful members of the community who could move into moderator roles to help us here. I believe it was one of the prizes in the store for a while, but we are trying to figure out exactly what functions they would perform, or abilities they would have available to them. We are still figuring that part out, but we are working with Studio on calibrating on our approach for our mods and where to go from here.

Personally, I think identifying new moderators who are part of the community through the rewards program has always been part of the plan, and a good one. What do you guys think about that?

Personally, I think identifying new moderators who are part of the community through the rewards program has always been part of the plan, and a good one. What do you guys think about that?

Hey buddy,

Honestly it would be the most ironic punishment as a reward Atvi could inflict on any of us forum vets.

. The moment you stick someone with a mod badge they lose their ability to be themselves and have to maintain a level of "professionalism" as there actions are reflections on the site and in this sites case Atvi.

With the utmost of respect to all my peers on here there isn't one of us forum vets imho who would make a good mod (and that is discounting someone would have to fill some seriously massive shoes after Fox, Claire, Black1ce and Topfighter ) *

If you really want to add a "community" mod , could I suggest firstly ,it is someone from the Euro time zone, and secondly someone the cod community/ studios already actually know and respect. ( I am going to assume you know who I an referring to here).

Then just bin the whole idea of using the rewards program to identify or award people mod status.

*I was not implying any of them have abnormally large feet

*disclaimer this post has been screenshot for my own personal records and I have tried to ensure no part of it breaks the Forums posted guidelines and rules which I found here Community Forum Etiquette and Guidelines

Thanks for the post, man. I agree with you, a mod from the UK/EU/AUS or somewhere else in the world would be awesome! Hopefully one will emerge in time.

I don't think it would be anyone's intention to "inflict" someone with something they didn't want. At the heart of the rewards program, our goal was to help inspire people in the community (not just vets, not just people looking for support, but everyone) to be more positive and helpful to one another. In doing so, we hoped to identify other community members who embody the same professionalism and values that Foxy, Claire, Black1ce and TopFighter have.

The original plan was, as community members go through helping each other, earning points, delivering constructive feedback they would eventually reach a level where the ability to opt into becoming a moderator would become available. The points were originally intended to be a currency, so a person would have to make the choice to "purchase" it (which would remove points), or purchase some other prize. In purchasing it they would basically be applying to be a moderator, and agreeing to the expectations of the position. Anyone who couldn't live up to the expectations would be removed. Also if we felt the person did not embody the values we are looking for, likely they wouldn't be allowed to be one.

This of course was the early approach to this, but we decided against it early until we could flesh out what would make the most sense, and what we could do with the program. Some of the bugs have set us back a bit on this, but I think the idea is still sound. There are awesome people here, and we would be remiss to think that someone here couldn't eventually live up to the caliber of our former and (to a lesser extent) our current moderator team.

This was just an idea, but hopefully we can figure out a way to make this happen eventually. Seeing the best and brightest from these forums take up the mantle of moderator would be and should be part of the plan. Any ideas on the how would be appreciated.

was to help inspire people in the community (not just vets, not just people looking for support, but everyone) to be more positive and helpful to one another.

That i completely agree with , but you have to appreciate you asking a community who if you have two of them in one discussion will have three diametrically opposite and heated opinions as to why x gun is overpowered .so yeah good luck with that one .

atvi_mikey wrote:

The original plan was, as community members go through, helping each other, earning points, delivering constructive feedback they would eventually reach a level where the ability to opt into becoming a moderator would become available. The points were originally intended to be a currency, so a person would have to make the choice to "purchase" it (which would remove points), or purchase some other prize. In purchasing it they would basically be applying to be a moderator, and agreeing to the expectations of the position. Anyone who couldn't live up to the expectations would be removed. Also if we felt did not really embody the values of the position, likely wouldn't be allowed to be one.

This of course was the early approach to this, but we decided against it early until we could flesh out what would make the most sense, and what we could do with the program. Some of the bugs have set us back a bit on this, but I think the idea is still sound. There are awesome people here, and we would be remiss to think that someone here couldn't eventually live up to the caliber of our former and (to a lesser extent) our current moderator team.

This was just an idea, but hopefully we can figure out a way to make this happen eventually. Seeing the best and brightest from these forums take up the mantle of moderator would be and should be part of the plan. Any ideas on the how would be appreciated.

Thanks for the post, dude!

Gonna post this here as opposed to the other thread as it all sort of ties into this one more i think.

Right going to be brutally honest here, When the rewards program was added it wiped all our ranks again ( it happened when the forums were migrated to jive, this seriously pissed off a lot of the forum vets so it was already off to a bad start. One of my main issue is it looks horrible, it is so off brand and at odds with everything else on this site. I have said this before a few times but it honestly looks like a pork chop tasting table at a barmitzvah,

The main ways I would "fix" the rewards program and consequently the fallout from it its instigation. is as follows (and in fairness, a lot of this is stuff the forum community said from day one)

Count the last few months as a "beta" and wipe everyone's points.

1) Brand it for CoD. Period. You can easily change the names of the missions, the descriptions and the graphics for the badges so they are CoD themed (more in keeping with the site and how the gamificiation worked on CharlieoscarDelta). There was some great community ideas for missions ages ago.

2) Remove the focus of it being based on support so much, and make it more about the entire forum as long as it stays as a support focused program it will never be popular. During my "holiday" I actually went through most of the leader boards , even before you leave the top ten on the leader boards (and discounting the cs accounts) it's pretty easy to see that people are not really bothering with the support missions side of things. The majority of points and badges that have been accrued by the forum community has been done just on general forum activities. The least completed badges are anything to do with the support forums.

3) Adjust the points so there isn't such a huge discrepancy between support based missions and non support based missions. The support missions need to be seriously nerfed. If you want to people to be rewarded for helping in the support forums that's fine but the things like 100 points for having an answer marked correct and missions that pay thousands of points in completion mean it will always be skewed. So yes if you want to reward forumites who do actively want to help its fine to give a slight increase over other missions still. By having such high paying missions based in the support forums , all you will create as we have already seen is spam. People asking pointless questions in the support forums (which bumps off genuine posts) and people replying with pointless answers just to get points. All the changes to the support forums to accommodate the rewards program have made the space confusing, and have been geared to people actively participating in the rewards program when the focus should've stayed on those people who come to the support forums for support.

The answer bank is pointless and serves no purpose it's confusing, an answer bank by its very definition should contain answers not unanswered questions. Same goes for the recent questions module (both of these things were added to aid the rewards program all they achieved was making the support forums completely confusing and not in the slightest bit user friendly. People who come onto the forums for support do so expecting a quick simple way of posting an issue.

3) With the utmost of respect RTFM of the gamification manual, missions and badges are so simple to set up and the amount of options means you can be really creative. When a mission is added have someone double check it was set up correctly. There are a lot of the missions award points for the wrong action, are supposedly limited to the number of specific actions you can do a day but aren't.

4) Rewards - simple.. ranks the gamification module already allows for this ( you can keep them as simple as prestige 1-10 or theme then as army ranks Private - General ) . If you want to add actual prizes you can then use the store to "buy" a prize if you have the required rank. BUT I would say the moment you add actual prizes people will try to manipulate the system. The problem is jive and the gamification module isn't robust or secure enough to stop people doing this. I would keep actual prizes to things like the spotlight feature or similar features. Missions can be set up for each sub forum so you can run something like the spotlight feature on each sub forum that way people can stay doing what they enjoying in the forums there prefer) (but unlike the current system do not actually offer prizes if you don't have them as it really annoys people and they thing have been used).

5) Feedback and Atvi interaction with the forum community, When the community gives feedback on the rewards program (and bearing in mind the idea is we are supposed to be participating so it makes sense to actually listen to us when we raise issues or dont like something ) could we please have someone who actually listens to us as opposed to someone with zero people skills whose only reply to anything is tough that's how we are doing it , or to delete any mention or issues and negativity.

6) Addressing a long standing bone of contention the rewards program introduced. Forum vets once again had their ranks stripped away, Things like our post counts (please can we have these back) and forum ranks meant a lot to us and we treated them as a mark of honor. It would take someone an hour odd to set up a couple of new user groups with the same basic rights we have now but with a new title (rather like cs and devs have their own title under their names)

7) Giving moderation rights to forum users, I thought on this a bit and came up with this... What about a system where there was forum users who had limited moderation rights in each sub space, That way their influence is limited to certain subs forum until they could "prove themselves". I could see this working well quite well, you could also tie it to the studios so platform specific stuff was addressed, and there would be a better direct line of communication between the studios and the community.

Another benefit would be sub forum mods would be able to move support related questions to the support forum. The support forums would work better and catch more questions.

8) Remove the rule that you will get banned if you boost, as long as that rule is there from a personal point of view I want nothing to do with the rewards program at all. If it won't be removed then find a way so forum users can opt out or in to the rewards program. The only punishment for boosting should be removal from the rewards scheme.

9) The rewards program should be there to bring more people into the forums and make then a fun community hub again, atm its having the opposite affect.

Thanks for the post, man. I agree with you, a mod from the UK/EU/AUS or somewhere else in the world would be awesome! Hopefully one will emerge in time.

I figured now we have lost Fox who we all know is awake 29 hours day, it might be a good idea to have someone in a non us timezone. Again I can think of one person who would be a great fit,

*disclaimer this post has been screenshot for my own personal records and I have tried to ensure no part of it breaks the Forums posted guidelines and rules which I found here Community Forum Etiquette and Guidelines

Right going to be brutally honest here, When the rewards program was added it wiped all our ranks again ( it happened when the forums were migrated to jive, this seriously pissed off a lot of the forum vets so it was already off to a bad start. One of my main issue is it looks horrible, it is so off brand and at odds with everything else on this site.

I hear ya on that one. I don't think there's any way to bring back what was lost in the move to Jive. For the ranks that existed before the move into the rewards program, we knew this could be a point of contention going into it, which is why we added the special badges based off of your points level before the change over. For example you have the Forum Master badge, while I only have the Forum Apprentice badge. There's no way anyone can level up that badge any more, its solely based on what you did before the change over.

Count the last few months as a "beta" and wipe everyone's points.

1) Brand it for CoD. Period. You can easily change the names of the missions, the descriptions and the graphics for the badges so they are CoD themed (more in keeping with the site and how the gamificiation worked on CharlieoscarDelta). There was some great community ideas for missions ages ago.

Lifting the veil a bit - the Rewards program wasn't conceived overnight. It took months of planning, and pitching, and re-pitching with various stakeholders (including multiple studios, IT departments, PR, Marketing, Legal, etc) for months before we got the greenlight to build it. In that time, and in those presentations, it went through various changes and updates. I think we originally intended for the program to be more closely COD themed, as it accounts for the lions-share of our support business, but multiple departments advised against it for various reasons. We instead went with a more brand agnostic approach. I hear your feedback on this one, and we will try to breathe some of the COD franchise into what we have, but I can't promise anything. Trust me when I say we tried.

2) Remove the focus of it being based on support so much, and make it more about the entire forum as long as it stays as a support focused program it will never be popular. During my "holiday" I actually went through most of the leader boards , even before you leave the top ten on the leader boards (and discounting the cs accounts) it's pretty easy to see that people are not really bothering with the support missions side of things. The majority of points and badges that have been accrued by the forum community has been done just on general forum activities. The least completed badges are anything to do with the support forums.

I think "support" has a negative connotation here, and I'm curious about it. When someone helps someone, or gives advice, thats a good thing. Thats support. We want to promote players who are helping each other, and champion them for it. That said, I agree helpful discussions can be as helpful as correct answers, so maybe we need to weight that a little differently, or add the ability to mark a discussion as "helpful" or "cool", and not just focus on answered questions. I agree that we have lost some traction when it comes to some of the more support related missions and badges, and we are looking at that. In our defense a bit, we haven't really advertised the program, and the only people really aware of it to this point are the vets who pay super close attention to anything that happens here. This has a lot to do with trying to get the formula right before we take it to the masses. You guys beating it up, has helped us get closer to our goal, so thanks!

3) Adjust the points so there isn't such a huge discrepancy between support based missions and non support based missions. The support missions need to be seriously nerfed. If you want to people to be rewarded for helping in the support forums that's fine but the things like 100 points for having an answer marked correct and missions that pay thousands of points in completion mean it will always be skewed. So yes if you want to reward forumites who do actively want to help its fine to give a slight increase over other missions still. By having such high paying missions based in the support forums , all you will create as we have already seen is spam. People asking pointless questions in the support forums (which bumps off genuine posts) and people replying with pointless answers just to get points. All the changes to the support forums to accommodate the rewards program have made the space confusing, and have been geared to people actively participating in the rewards program when the focus should've stayed on those people who come to the support forums for support.

Again, to my point above, being helpful seems to have some negativity attached to it. To your point, however, we have skewed things a bit in an attempt to get more people helping each other, to mixed results. Admittedly some calibration is in order, but these are things we are going through all the time and figuring out how to adjust. Hopefully we find the right balance here soon.

That said, I think i've been trained to feel there is no such thing as a stupid question, so its hard for me to feel like even the simplest question asked is not helpful to someone. If someone is abusing the system, however, I would hope that others who believe in the spirit of this program and making the forums great again would help point those people out. I would also hope that my moderators are doing their job and looking for that stuff and nipping it in the bud, as they say.

The answer bank is pointless and serves no purpose it's confusing, an answer bank by its very definition should contain answers not unanswered questions. Same goes for the recent questions module (both of these things were added to aid the rewards program all they achieved was making the support forums completely confusing and not in the slightest bit user friendly. People who come onto the forums for support do so expecting a quick simple way of posting an issue.

I love this one, it always makes me laugh. You're right, IMO, an answer bank should contain answers, not questions, lol. I don't know how we came up with that name, and I have to take some responsibility for it as I was in the meetings where it was discussed and it never occurred to me. I'm sure there is some reason this is what its referred to, and i'm doing my teammates some injustice by not knowing what that is, but Ill ask about that one.

Also, I think we can do some tweaks to make this more helpful, but having an aggregator for unanswered questions to help people identify if others are experiencing what they are, is not a bad idea. I don't know if we are ready to let this one go yet.

3) With the utmost of respect RTFM of the gamification manual, missions and badges are so simple to set up and the amount of options means you can be really creative. When a mission is added have someone double check it was set up correctly. There are a lot of the missions award points for the wrong action, are supposedly limited to the number of specific actions you can do a day but aren't.

Noted. We've run into a number of issues with some of our missions, and we need to be better about getting to the bottom of those quickly. I think some of the tools we are using here aren't as robust as you may think they are. Also, i'm pretty simple when it comes to this stuff. Make some suggestions for missions if you have them. Id love to see if we are looking at the same thing when it comes to the options you see available to you. You have my card, I believe, feel free to email me suggestions, and I will vet through them with you and forward off. If that interests you, no pressure.

4) Rewards - simple.. ranks the gamification module already allows for this ( you can keep them as simple as prestige 1-10 or theme then as army ranks Private - General ) . If you want to add actual prizes you can then use the store to "buy" a prize if you have the required rank. BUT I would say the moment you add actual prizes people will try to manipulate the system. The problem is jive and the gamification module isn't robust or secure enough to stop people doing this. I would keep actual prizes to things like the spotlight feature or similar features. Missions can be set up for each sub forum so you can run something like the spotlight feature on each sub forum that way people can stay doing what they enjoying in the forums there prefer) (but unlike the current system do not actually offer prizes if you don't have them as it really annoys people and they thing have been used).

I think I addressed some of this a little earlier. Our hands are a bit tied when it comes to theme. But I'll drudge the conversation up again. Keep in mind that we are not the end-all, be-all when it comes to some decisions, even around our own programs. There's a lot of moving parts involved in every decision, which can slow things down at times, which is as frustrating for us as it is for you. We are but a lowly support department. We don't every time get what we want.

As for the tangible prizes. I don't know that we have introduced anything, but it is something we are interested in. Of course we need to button up our cheat detection and moderator processes before we give anyone the ability to win a car or something like that. Still, that's the dream. I like your suggestions. Consider them noted.

5) Feedback and Atvi interaction with the forum community, When the community gives feedback on the rewards program (and bearing in mind the idea is we are supposed to be participating so it makes sense to actually listen to us when we raise issues or dont like something ) could we please have someone who actually listens to us as opposed to someone with zero people skills whose only reply to anything is tough that's how we are doing it , or to delete any mention or issues and negativity.

Trust me when I say that there is no bigger advocate for the people in this community in this department than Gypsy816. While I love talking to everyone here when I get around to it, I have had my moments where I have turned sour, and she is the first one to slap me back into playing nice. I **** you not, when I say that she has begged and pleaded on the behalf of all of your feedback for months. Unfortunately due to all of the moving parts related to this technology, and things out of our control, the updates have been slow going. This ends up reflecting on her, but it is unfair, and I plan to do my utmost to make sure I am screaming as loud as she is to get you guys the forums experience you deserve.

On another note here, I run the moderator team. They report to me. Any action taken by them, is action sanctioned directly through me. I know there has been some confusion around the way things are going here, but trust me when I say its partly because we are moving with purpose, and partly because of calibration issues on me and my teams part. We are working to get these things in line, but we are also not playing when it comes to delivering great experiences to the 2 million active users who visit these boards, and not just the few thousands who call it home. There is a tone here, and its not a great one. We want to make this a more welcome place for the casual forum users, as much as it is for those who have cut-their-teeth here over the years. We want everyone to play nice, and we are going to do what it takes to make sure that happens. For the sake of everyone involved.

6) Addressing a long standing bone of contention the rewards program introduced. Forum vets once again had their ranks stripped away, Things like our post counts (please can we have these back) and forum ranks meant a lot to us and we treated them as a mark of honor. It would take someone an hour odd to set up a couple of new user groups with the same basic rights we have now but with a new title (rather like cs and devs have their own title under their names)

I think I address this one above, but it that doesnt satisfy, I will look into figuring out a way to remedy this bone.

7) Giving moderation rights to forum users, I thought on this a bit and came up with this... What about a system where there was forum users who had limited moderation rights in each sub space, That way their influence is limited to certain subs forum until they could "prove themselves". I could see this working well quite well, you could also tie it to the studios so platform specific stuff was addressed, and there would be a better direct line of communication between the studios and the community.

Another benefit would be sub forum mods would be able to move support related questions to the support forum. The support forums would work better and catch more questions.

You're speaking my language, friend. This is almost verbatim conversation we have been having internally, especially the part about moving threads. We are looking into this, and its just a matter of identifying the individuals we would sanction with such abilities.

8) Remove the rule that you will get banned if you boost, as long as that rule is there from a personal point of view I want nothing to do with the rewards program at all. If it won't be removed then find a way so forum users can opt out or in to the rewards program. The only punishment for boosting should be removal from the rewards scheme.

I'm not sure about this one. I think if we have the ability to identify someone who is really giving boosting a go, why wouldnt we take action on them. All cases are investigated fully before we pull the trigger, and users will certainly receive a warning before any ban would ever take place (unless of course the transgression were egregious), but if we are identifying a frequent line-stepper, that's not someone we want participating in our programs. We will look into the opt in ability, but we hope everyone here wants to keep their nose clean.

9) The rewards program should be there to bring more people into the forums and make then a fun community hub again, atm its having the opposite affect.

Again, we are agreed, my friend. I hope that we can continue making progress toward greatness. There are a lot of helpful people in these forums, who know how to deliver constructive feedback in a positive manner, and we want to talk to all of them. I just hope that people understand that, as with any digital product, there are a lot of stakeholders and other variables involved. If we didn't have patience we would be burning things down on our end. We are ALWAYS working towards awesome. We want it as much as you all do.

dusts hands, there done, simples.

Ditto. I hope this sheds some light, and we can all get back to business.

I think "support" has a negative connotation here, and I'm curious about it. When someone helps someone, or gives advice, thats a good thing. Thats support.

The negative connotation is not aimed at giving help, certainly not from maccabi, who has been peerless in giving help to forumers, through the Support section, over a long period of time. The problem is solely related to the balance of the gamification program. Maccabi and myself are number 1 and 2 on the Leaderboards. The reason is simple, we help out a lot in the support section and is the reason why we were both Spotlighted in Above and Beyond.From the beginning of the forum point system being integrated both of us have been saying that the balance was far too skewed towards support areas. Even though we have benefited on the leaderboards from this skewed system, we agree it is far from optimal. There are many forum vets who are languishing down near the bottom of the leaderboards because they are not support minded. I wont name names, because that is unfair on everyone. Suffice to say, being involved in creating positive discussion / posts / ideas / banter / etc is just as important to the forum as a whole as Support is, if not more so.

I will go down fighting in relinquishing my top spot, there will be bloodshed ,,,, but I seriously feel a bit embarrassed seeing the point gap between myself and those I have come to respect.

The community ideas for missions where put forward in the following thread:

True, losing previous rank on the forum was a pain, more than once, but over that now...........mostly..

The main problem is the constant and never ending repetition on clan threads blowing up the recent content page, who knows how many threads slip by unseen by a lot of us because in the space of a few minutes a thread can go from top of the page to gone because 20 or 30 clan recruitment threads get bumped by the posters.

For example you have the Forum Master badge, while I only have the Forum Apprentice badge. There's no way anyone can level up that badge any more, its solely based on what you did before the change over.

This would be something nice to see under the poster's avatar on forum posts. It's a nice acknowledgement but you have to go out of your way to view it. (all of the badges, tbh).

For example you have the Forum Master badge, while I only have the Forum Apprentice badge. There's no way anyone can level up that badge any more, its solely based on what you did before the change over.

This would be something nice to see under the poster's avatar on forum posts. It's a nice acknowledgement but you have to go out of your way to view it. (all of the badges, tbh).

Quick reply - the badges are useless in this respect as Ran pointed out unless you go and look at someones badges we would much prefer something on the forum below our names .

I'm sure the ship has sailed long ago... but I really miss my post count. To have something which was built up over 6 years go poof overnight... kinda sucked.

Giving forum goers mod rights maybe isn't the best idea. Not because they would abuse it but because of how it would isolate them from the community. They would be in between the community and ATIVI... a foot in both but a part of neither.